UDA primaries: Will DP Ruto fly or flop?
Deputy President William Ruto’s decision to personally supervise the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) primaries that are being held today across the country could be a double-edged sword with strong ramifications on his State House campaigns.
It will be a delicate balancing act for the DP who is poised to either take claim for the success of the exercise or take the blame in case things take an ugly turn.
If he steers delivery of credible primaries, the Deputy President will not only stem stormy fallouts that could hurt the party but steady the ship for the August contest against the Azimio-One Kenya Alliance of Raila Odinga.
The DP took both barbs and bouquets when he presided over a similar exercise in 2017 with some candidates accusing him of rigging them out.
The UDA presidential hopeful will supervise the primaries after two weeks of deal cutting that saw many candidates reach consensus on various seats, forestalling what would have been stormy nominations in certain contests today.
The DP helped broker deals among his allies in the Kakamega, Narok, Kisii, Nairobi governorship contests and the Kiambu senate race, a move said to be attributable to his decisive nature and strong bargaining skills helped by the fact that unlike Azimio, Kenya Kwanza Alliance doesn’t have long layers of command and multiplicity of competing interests among rank and file.
General election
“We are fully aware of the importance of this exercise and as I told our members, I will personally supervise them to ensure that our exercise is above board and every member gets an opportunity to be voted for and to win or not win fairly,” said the DP on the primaries.
Ruto yesterday oversaw preparations for the exercise including dispatch of the relevant material to polling centres.
“I have personally been supervising that exercise for the last two days and we have printed close to 30 million ballots already and we are concluding 15 million ballots that are still outstanding in the next three days; so that we can be ready by this weekend to run the nominations across the country,” he said last week.
Ruto yesterday said the year-old party had prepared something akin to a General Election.
“Tomorrow, we will have a near General Election in Kenya. The UDA family will have nominations in 35 counties, close to 5,000 aspirants will be participating in the nominations…this is the biggest exercise ever undertaken by any political party in Kenya,” he said ahead of the polls.
He urged aspirants and supporters to be peaceful, revealing that all the equipment required had been dispatched to the polling centres.
“I want to ask each and every aspirant to participate peacefully, to make sure their supporters are peaceful. We are committed that the elections will be free, fair and democratic. We have made all the necessary arrangements, we have dispatched all ballot papers today, and all the ballot papers will be in their stations tomorrow morning,” the DP said.
Hands-on
Former Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission vice-chair Lilian Mahiri-Zaja thinks the DP must have been emboldened by the level of preparedness for the poll.
“It is a daunting task but it all depends on their preparedness and organisation,” she told People Daily.
“It will also depend on the kind of resources the UDA elections team has dedicated to the exercise,” she said.
Political analyst Javas Bigambo said the move by Ruto was not only timely but best for him to avert any failures.
Bigambo said Ruto’s move was not different from the one he did in 2017 only that this time round he is the one going for the top seat.
“If you look at Ruto’s career you can tell he is a hands-on person and he is a person who is not criticised. As long as he thinks that whatever he is doing is right, he is usually unmoved. Given the recent happenings within Kenya Kwanza, you can easily tell that Ruto is not only focused on winning the top seat but having a majority of elected leaders,” argues Bigambo.
“His negotiations are perfect in all cases where consensus was required and you can tell so far there are no fallouts within the outfit. The DP seems to be hawk-eyed on affairs of the party to ensure there are no cases of candidates complaining of being short-changed. Everyone knows that he is a firm person and there could be no better opportunity to take charge than during the party primaries,” Bigambo told People Daily in an interview.
Ruto’s deals are said to have been based on negotiated democracy and opinion polls.
However, a section of UDA aspirants yesterday threatened to go to court to bar political parties from using the negotiated democracy approach in races where there is more than one aspirant saying it is only working for aspirants who have money.
“Most aspirants have been short-changed in the name of negotiated democracy. We will move to court to ensure that political parties are barred from using it. In cases where negotiated democracy has been used, it is only the wealthy who have won because they are always able to maneuver through fraudulent dealings,” said Jimmy Parnyumbe, a senate aspirant from Narok County.
Short-changed
Parnyumbe alleged that UDA used the approach to deny him a chance to contest in the Narok Senate race.
“It is sad to note that our party has short-changed me and given the ticket to my competitor Governor Samuel Tunai despite being active in the party affairs in what they call consensus which is shrouded by cases of favouritism and open bias,” he said.
With the party set to conduct nominations today, Parnyumbe said he will move to political parties’ dispute tribunal to compel the party to hold nominations for the Senate seat.
“We are worried that the party which was thought to be a party of the poor, less fortunate is slowly turning into a rich man’s outfit. If Deputy President Ruto is not careful, this party will lose its influence and other parties will overtake it,” he warned.
There were also fears that competitors could rally support for weak UDA opponents in today’s primaries.
On Kajiado for instance, the hand of Azimio candidates has started rearing itself with opponents said to be mobilising their supporters to vote for preferred candidates in the competitors’ wing.
Upper hand
Kajiado East MP Peris Tobiko and her Kajiado South counterpart Katoo Ole Metito are considered front runners of the UDA ticket battling against former NTSA managing director Francis Meja, who is considered an underdog in the race.
With clan politics at play, Governor Joseph Ole Lenku (ODM) and former governor David Nkedianye (Jubilee), who are under Azimio coalition, are said to front Tobiko and Katoo respectively as candidates whom they consider weak and would give them an upper hand in the August polls.
Although the two leaders have not come out publicly to directly influence the nominations, some of their diehard supporters perceived to be speaking on their behalf have been in the forefront rallying for a large turnout.
Sources within Lenku and Nkedianye inner circle have also revealed to People Daily that the mobilisation is a key political strategy.
For instance, Nkedianye is said to be indirectly rooting for Katoo win while Lenku is rooting for Tobiko’s win.
Given that Tobiko and Nkedianye hail from the Ilkaputiei section of the Maasai, if she loses in the nominations most of her votes will be added to the Nkedianye basket.
On the other hand, a win for Tobiko is a win for Lenku given that she hails from the same Ilkisongo section of the Maasai with Katoo. The two are considered to influence the larger share of the Ilkisongo kinsmen concentrated in Kajiado South making up to about 65,000 voters of the 464,105 votes according to IEBC register.
